Legislation rolled out by congressional Democrats last week would do just that. The Equality Act would extend protections on employment, housing and public accommodations under civil rights law to gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people.

The measure is certain to encounter a rugged road in the Republican-led House, where religious freedom and fear of lawsuits are likely to be raised in opposition.

Anticipating such resistance, supporters of the Equality Act wisely invoked the tactic that worked so successfully in eliciting public support for same-sex marriage: frame the issue in human terms. They presented a lesbian married couple from Michigan whose daughter was denied treatment after a pediatrician “prayed on it.” They presented a Nebraska man who was fired from a wine shop after bringing his boyfriend to visit the workplace.

Such blatant acts of bigotry are intolerable in a nation founded on the principle that all people are created equal. Still, the evolution of civil rights law invariably has required confrontation with deeply ingrained beliefs that discrimination can be justified as a matter of culture or religion or economic interest. It’s happened with race, it’s happened with gender, it’s happened with disabilities — and, yes, it’s happened with religion.

Fortunately, public recognition of the unequal treatment of LGBT people under the law has been growing fast, as evident from the transformation of marriage equality from revolutionary notion — don’t forget the 2004 backlash to the City Hall weddings sanctioned by then-Mayor Gavin Newsom — to mainstream acceptance. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule against gays and lesbians serving openly in the military was dropped in 2011 without great fanfare or any lessening of readiness.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, has played a prominent role in trying to extend civil rights protection. As she put it so well last week, there is “no place for discrimination in America, not in employment, not in housing, not in transportation, not in health care, not in any subject you can name.”